Hi Flower,
Congratulations on your "outing" from the cult!
The date I will remember is Sept 22, 2001 (my son's 1st birthday, also the date I drove down to the U of Penn bookstore and bought Franz's book - Crisis of Conscience). I am now 3 months into my exodus and I can tell you things will start making more sense soon enough. Nice to meet you anyway, and welcome. How old are you rboys by the way? I loved the pics!
- BadWillie.
badwillie
JoinedPosts by badwillie
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20
I dont remember the date I was baptized....
by flower inyou know how at every baptismal talk they say to the candidates that they should 'make a note of this date june, 4 whatever..ect'?
and everyone knows that date for like the rest of their life?
well i dont remember when i was baptized.
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badwillie
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DIM goes out in service
by DIM inwell, i'm moving away across the country in 2 months and my mother wants to spend some time with me.
being a pioneer, her idea of spending time with her oldest son is working out in service for a morning....i've decided to go along with her tomorrow morning because i really couldn't think of a good excuse, since i'm presently laid off from my job and collecting $$ from the state of pa. i haven't been out since about march and am not looking forward to this at all.
hopefully i won't have to talk or say much.
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badwillie
Hey DIM,
Sounds like a typical day. I would get physically sick if i were to go out knocking again!
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How do we learn to really trust?
by Sirona inhaving been betrayed by the jehovahs witnesses - both the organisation and the individuals who now shun us - how do we learn to trust again?.
i ask this because i have realised that i dont trust anyone.
it goes beyond a healthy mistrust of strangers...it affects my closest relationships.
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badwillie
JoelBear makes some excellent suggestions IMO. We cannot give ourselves completely to everyone.
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The royal family? Pass the bucket
by sleepy inhow do you brits feel about the royal family or the idea of a royal family?.
personally i dont like it.. i often feel repulsed when i see other wise sane people curtsy or bow to a royal family member.. i could never show this level of obeisance to another human being.. i would be friendly yes.
shake their hand as thats what i do to other people.
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badwillie
Sleepy,
I agree 100%. I am an American who lived in London for 8 1/2 years.
I you haven't already, please read the hilarious book by Sue Townsend called "the Queen and I". Here's a synopsis from .Amazon.co.ukSynopsis
A revolutionary British government orders the Queen to abdicate and the Royal family to vacate Buckingham Palace. Being rehoused on a council estate in the Midlands comes as a bit of a shock to Philip and Elizabeth. The intrusion of this family of "poshos" is a shock for their new neighbours too.- BadWillie.
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10
Taliban's Religious Police like the WT's Elders
by badwillie insunday, december 2, 2001 .
at afghan ministry, leather lashes are idle .
by andrew maykuth .
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badwillie
Sunday, December 2, 2001
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At Afghan ministry, leather lashes are idle
By Andrew Maykuth
PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER STAFF WRITERKABUL, Afghanistan - The employees of Afghanistan's hated religious police still gather every morning at the cold concrete building where Taliban officials once concerned themselves with such matters as the proper length of a pious man's beard.
But there is not much work to be done now that the Northern Alliance has taken over Kabul and the Taliban has fled. After signing in and exchanging a few pleasantries, the staff of the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice calls it a day and goes home.
"If you don't show up for work and don't sign the time sheets every day, the new government will think you're a Taliban," said Farhad, an employee in the ministry's personnel office. Like most of the staff, he has not been paid for five months and does not want to sacrifice his back pay by not showing up for work.
The employees who gather here every day are career civil servants. They say they are the support staff, and it is not their place to question the judgment of political leaders or to be held accountable for their actions.
The officials who enforced the Taliban's puritanical Islamic codes with public floggings and humiliations are long gone.
"It's just not those of us at the ministry of virtue and vice who worked for the Taliban," said Jaweed, who worked in the ministry's finance office for a year. "All government workers are in the same position."
One might expect that an agency with such a dastardly reputation as the ministry of virtue would disappear with the transfer of power to a new, more enlightened, government. But employees here expect that a new regime will retain a ministry of Islamic moral enforcement once an interim administration is in place.
"In all Islamic governments there's a need of a ministry of virtue and vice," said Mohammed Razie Wazir, 35, whom the Northern Alliance leaders dispatched to the ministry as caretaker until an interim government is appointed after talks now under way in Germany.
Wazir envisions a more liberal ministry that suggests rather than imposes a code for Islamic dress and behavior. He says there will be no more use for the leather lashes and wire cables he found in the ministry's offices, formerly used by the religious police to beat conformity into the populace.
"The ministry would tell people the benefits of having a beard," he said. "Then I think it's the choice of people whether to grow one."
The uncertainty about what type of government will emerge from the talks in Bonn and the sorts of restrictions it will place on personal behavior weighs heavily on the minds of Kabul residents. Few women have shed the full-length veils called burqas that were imposed upon Afghan women in Kabul after the Taliban took control in 1996.
"We are waiting for a clear word from the government," said Mariam Afzal, a middle-aged former teacher who began work last week with an international humanitarian agency but is not ready to shed her burqa.
"Many people are uneducated," she said. "If we suddenly take our burqas off, they may think we've converted to Christianity and react badly."
There is ample reason to believe the new government will keep some sort of state vice squad.
Many Northern Alliance leaders trace their roots to the mujaheddin government that ruled Afghanistan before it was ousted from the capital in 1996. The Islamic government created a department of virtue and vice in its justice ministry whose main purpose was to vet employees for purity of thought.
The Taliban elevated virtue and vice to a full cabinet ministry and ordered teams of enforcers to throttle violators in public. The religious police rarely attempted to enforce the rules inside people's homes.
Almost every one in Kabul knows somebody who has been treated harshly by the religious police - the Amre Belmaruf. Known derisively as the "Uncle Maruf," the moral police often received only rudimentary religious education. They would accost women walking with men, forcing them to prove that their escorts were their brothers or their betrothed.
The rules of public behavior were restrictive. For instance, tailors could not take the measurements of women because it was too intimate for Taliban puritanical tastes. So garment makers devised elaborate methods to put lookouts in the street to warn them while they worked with women customers.
Mahnaz Amani, a 26-year-old Afghan widow who arrived in Kabul last June after spending more than a decade in Iran, was unaware of the extent of the Taliban's reach until she went alone to a tailor's shop.
As she inspected pages of fashion designs, the Taliban rushed in and demanded to know what she was doing. "They asked me to stand up and then they came at me with the lash and started beating," she said.
The tailor defended her, saying she was new to Afghanistan and ignorant of the rules. So the police started beating him.
"I left, but I later learned the tailor spent two months in jail getting religious studies," Amani said.
Many of the former employees of the ministry have now trimmed the bushy beards the Taliban required to honor the Prophet Muhammad. A few said they disapproved at the time of the enforcers' harsh treatment of the population.
Noori, a 68-year employment officer who has worked in government for three decades, said the Taliban sacked him and more than 50 others for objecting to Taliban tactics.
"We told them that what they were doing was against Islamic law," said Noori, who, like many Afghans, uses only one name. His job was restored only a few months ago.
Some former employees doubted the religious police were systematically undermining civilian rights.
"I think the Taliban were telling people to be kind," said Mohammed Yusef, 57, who was responsible for organizing Muslim clerics. "It was only a few ignorant ones who didn't know Islamic law well who were beating people in the market."
Yusef said he is worried that the new government will be too liberal, judging by the changes that have happened thus far - leaders have lifted bans on music, movies, photography and beard length.
"I'm upset," said Yusef, whose flowing white beard is untrimmed. "It's our job in the ministry of virtue and vice to tell people they're not doing the right thing. It's my job to tell them, 'You're not in compliance with sharia law.' "
Yusef's speech prompted an interruption from Mohammed Ismael, 38, a guard at the ministry's front gate. He said he once saw Taliban outside the building tie up a woman, beat her and throw her into a vehicle because she was walking with a man - her brother, it turned out.
"It was a big shame for the woman to get arrested in public," said Ismael. "I think many people who work for virtue and vice are covering the facts, and I wanted to tell you what was in my heart."
Some things haven't changed. Inside the foyer of the ministry, whose records Wazir said were looted, are various posters with reminders about moral rigidity.
One poster said: "If a woman is under a burqa, she is like a jewel."
Another outlined 10 commandments of good behavior, explaining much about the Taliban's humorless culture. The rules include obeying calls to prayer, reading from the Koran, and learning Arabic, the mother tongue of all Arabs. It warns that a Muslim should not make jokes about Islam, not talk loudly, and not laugh, "because laughter will make your heart die."
A final notice from the Taliban bulletin board may no longer apply now that more than 200 former ministry employees have disappeared: "No vacancies. All office jobs are full."
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Andrew Maykuth's e-mail address is [email protected].--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Only Fools And Horses Xmas Special
by Englishman init's 5 years since dellboy and rodney made their last episode.
i thought that fans may be interested to know that they are actually filming a 3 part christmas special here in wsm right now as i post this.. david jason (dellboy) paid my local pub a visit last time he was here, i actually nodded to him as though he was a regular before it sank in who he was.. maybe he will turn up again, hope he doesn't bring that plonker with him......!.
englishman.. nostalgia isn't what it used to be....
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badwillie
Thanks E-man!
I'll look for the DVD, I think they should work anywhere. I don't think there are all the different formats like with video tapes. -
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Only Fools And Horses Xmas Special
by Englishman init's 5 years since dellboy and rodney made their last episode.
i thought that fans may be interested to know that they are actually filming a 3 part christmas special here in wsm right now as i post this.. david jason (dellboy) paid my local pub a visit last time he was here, i actually nodded to him as though he was a regular before it sank in who he was.. maybe he will turn up again, hope he doesn't bring that plonker with him......!.
englishman.. nostalgia isn't what it used to be....
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badwillie
Hey E-man,
I loved that show! I lived in London from 1991-99, and I always looked forward to Dellboy and Rodders and Granddad at Christmas.
Thanks for that very important piece of info!
My wife and I will be returning for a visit, we'll be there from Dec. 27 - Jan 6. Any idea yet what the show will air? If we're not going to be there I can have my wife's mum tape it.
Also, do you or anyone else know if the series is available on DVD or video.I'd love to bring that home with me.
Thanks,
BadWillie. -
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badwillie
Young People Axe... Why do all the women in my congregation have to wear pantyhose (that's tights to you Brits) - even in the middle of summer!
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FARTING at the meetings
by gambler ini'm sure you all have some good comical stories of pple farting during prayer or other quiet times during meeting.
as a personal experience of mine, the night before i had eaten a frozen pizza, doritos, and some old chocolate milk.
this combination produced the worst smelling brew i have ever had.
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badwillie
Once when I was about 13 years old I was handling the microphone during the service meeting. During a question and answer talk I was standing at the back of the hall with the microphone. I suddenly got an unbelievably sharp pain in my abdomen which turned out to be gas. At the very same moment as the pain, the brother on the platform called on someone in the front row to answer. Well you can guess what happened next - I had to walk the entire length of the hall with my cheeks pinched together tighter than a gnat's ass, even still there were some audible rumblings a few times while I was mid stride.
To make maters worse, there I was standing now at the front of the hall in my shame, while the person I was holding the mic for gave what seemed to be the longest comment ever! -
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Why I Do What I Do - Randy Watters
by Dogpatch inhi friends,.
i have been overwhelmed by the number of witnesses contacting me on the net lately.
traffic to the site has more than tripled since feb. 1999, and i am getting tons of email every day.
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badwillie
Randy,
You remember when I first read info on your site, I just HAD to call you. It was important for me to speak personally to the one who had written/collated these things. I, and my wife, talked to you several times over the phone in those first few weeks. You were ALWAYS available to us. You were interested in US, and we could feel that sincerity. You never coerced us in any way to accept whatever belief you personally had. In fact, I never asked you what you had come to believe since leaving the org, and you never mentioned it either. It just didn't matter. Your compassion, insight, and love for what is right and just proved to be a huge catalyst for us in making up our minds about the WT organization. This attitude stood in stark contrast to that which we had experienced within the JW's. Your unselfishly giving of yourself to help us to that point is appreciated VERY much! Thank you again, and again, and again!
Keep up the good work, brother.
- BadWillie.